Hocking: Glasses-free 3D PS3 not “for a while,” Home 3D a “possibility”

Want to live the 3DS dream with your PS3 and a big screen TV? You’re going to be waiting a fair bit, according to Sony.

The firm’s WWS 3D boss, Mick Hocking, told VG247 at gamescom last week that the glasses-free tech included in 3DS shouldn’t be expected on large TVs for a long time.

“The only way at the moment of achieving high-definition, high quality 3D on a TV is via some form of glasses,” said Hocking.

“We need to filter the image to each eye.”

Hocking added: “Our solution is the active glass solution on the BRAVIA. This is because we can deliver full-resolution frames, there’s no drop in resolution and we don’t get flicker in our glass solution either, so this, we think, is the best way of achieving the highest possible quality 3D experience on the TV.”

Hocking added that glasses-free 3D solutions can work well on small screens, but “don’t work very well at all” for larger screens.

“There are methods that are called autostereoscopic where you don’t require glasses, but these are limited in various ways. They only work for a typically single viewer, and they can only show a small amount of depth, so for very small screens they’re OK,” he said.

“And you scale them up to a big screen; they don’t work very well at all. There are no technologies at the moment to do glasses-free technology on TVs, and I don’t think that’s going to change for a while, actually, because any way you try and do it glasses-free on TV is incredibly complex.

“The cost would be very high, even if someone could develop it.”

PSP 3D? Sony isn’t saying

While SCEA’s John Koller told IGN earlier in the year that glassless 3D wasn’t coming to its handhelds following the 3DS announce back in March, it seemed Hocking’s signaled that, while 3D sans les spectacles is a way off for PS3, could it be making its way to PSP in the future?

“I couldn’t comment on it at the moment,” said Hocking.

“Our focus at the moment is really on living room-based, big-screen TV, because we think that’s the most imersive 3D experience you can have. In the future, we may look at other ways of doing it, but at the moment, that’s certainly our focus: the high-quality entertainment on your TV.”

Home 3D may be in your future

Glasses aside, it seems PSN services could make the jump to 3D in addition to games, such as the Video Delivery Service on PlayStation Store or even PlayStation Home.

“As the popularity of 3D grows, I think there would definitely be a possibility that we’d look at things like maybe 3D Home, maybe supporting 3D movie content,” Hocking said.

“You know the wonderful thing about PlayStation 3 is that it’s upgradeable. We can upgrade the platform to support new types of content. We’ve already got games, we’ve got movies, Blu-ray movies coming soon and we’re going to support 3D photos pretty soon as well.

“So yes, it is possible in the future we will expand that and support more types of content.